February 28, 2023
By Sharan Kaur Phillora
The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced the deployment of Base, an Ethereum layer two (L2) scaling network after developers launched the Base testnet on Thursday. The company said it is incubating its Base within Coinbase and that the L2 chain will progressively decentralize over time.
Here’s what we know:
Coinbase is joining the competition of Ethereum L2 scaling projects, such as Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, Starknet, and others, by launching an L2 called Base. The company announced the launch of the Base testnet on Thursday and advised the public to stay tuned for the upcoming mainnet launch.
Coinbase shared a Tweet: “Base is an Ethereum L2 that offers a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly way for anyone, anywhere, to build decentralized apps. Our goal with Base is to make on-chain the next online and onboard 1B+ users into the crypto economy.”
Base’s vision is to become fully permissionless over time. “Base will progress from a Stage 0 to Stage 1 rollup in 2023 and a Stage 2 rollup in 2024,” the announcement noted. Furthermore, the blog post stresses that Coinbase has ‘no plans to issue a new network token.’
While Base will be a separate network, it will be powered by Ethereum and leverage the underlying security of Ethereum.
Coinbase also announced the launch of a Base Ecosystem Fund to support early-stage projects working with Base as long as they meet the company’s investment criteria.
Like many L2 platforms, Base will offer lower fees than the cost to transact on-chain with Ethereum.
When Coinbase launched the Base testnet, users on social media complained about a bumpy start. Coinbase Web3 developer Roberto Bayardo explained that the issue was fixed and noted that a lot of people were bridging. ‘We’re submitting the contracts for verification now,’ Bayardo added.
About the author
Sharan Kaur Phillora’s thirst for knowledge has led her to study many different subjects, including NFTs and Blockchain technology – two emerging technologies that will change how we interact with each other in the future. When she isn’t exploring a new idea or concept, she enjoys reading literary masterpieces.
